


Falling Forward

by Heronfem



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Developing Relationship, Halward Pavus' A+ Parenting, M/M, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6651430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronfem/pseuds/Heronfem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian is given a rather pointed notice that his engagement is off, and moves into Bull's room when recovery turns very slow.</p>
<p>The beginning of a relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Forward

On the kind of blustery afternoon that was so prevalent in the mountains, Dorian sat in the quiet of his own room and thought wistfully of home. Oh, certainly there were things he despised about Tevinter, but the weather was certainly not one of them. The wind buffeted Skyhold like a living thing, as if trying to play with the rocks.

His room was small but pleasant, above the garden and just off the library. It had taken some wrangling to get it, because Josephine had plenty of Orlesians to house and space was limited, but he'd finally managed to pin her down and get her to give him the smallest of the ledge rooms, as they were called. It was in the back corner, furthest from the door, but that kept his room against the sturdy bones of the building and let it warm. There was a small fireplace inside, a battered chest of drawers, a bed that had seen better days but had thick, comforting blankets on it, and a little desk with a mismatched chair almost as nice as the one in his nook. 

He had curled into the bed for the afternoon, having abandoned the library in a fit of quiet despair, and then his thoughts had started turning to home. He ached. He missed it like a limb. 

Dorian was just beginning to debate the finer points of getting drunk on Antivan brandy or Orlesian red for the day when there was a brisk knock at the door. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it was to no avail. The knock came again, just as chipper. With an almighty groan, he reluctantly dragged himself out of bed, shoving on his room slippers and going to the door. Rather peevishly he cracked it.

“Yes?”

A runner stood before him, smiling bright, and he pulled the door open a little more. “Message for you, Ser.”

He opened the door properly, the runner stepped forward, and a knife sank into his gut. The smile on the runner's face became a rictus. As Dorian stumbled back, already feeling woozy, the runner said in sickly sweet tones, “House Herandus sends their regards.”

The door closed.

Dorian fell.

oOo

Amazingly, he didn't die.

By rights, he should have. He had come alarmingly close to it for a few minutes after he'd dragged himself out of his room, but a runner had spotted him collapsed and had fetched someone. Dorian was whisked off down to the infirmary, where he was blissfully knocked out and woke up with his stomach covered in bandages.

Meershaum got back about four hours after he woke back up, with Bull, Vivienne, and Blackwall in tow. Saying they were upset was an understatement.

Dorian smiled as he watched Blackwall pace, his own hands resting comfortably on his chest. “Blackwall, please, do sit down. You'll wear a hole in that rug.”

Bull had already been in to see him, had gently ran a hand over his face, and Dorian had sent him off to go express his fear on some dummies. Judging by the sounds from outside, Bull was doing just that. 

Blackwall spun on his heel and marched back over to him, throwing himself in the chair next to Dorian's bed. “How can you be fine with this? You nearly died. Gut wounds generally aren't something people expect to come back from.”

“Your concern for me is touching.” Dorian relaxed into the pillows, feeling a little woozy. “Besides, it wasn't exactly personal. It was just House Herandus declaring that my engagement was off. My death would have been an added bonus, but this was mostly just a courtesy call. Bull had one as well from the Qun, didn't you hear?”

“Bull was also a Qunari spy with combat experience,” Blackwall said dryly. “Not a pampered Tevinter mage who lives in a library.” He paused as Dorian grinned at him. “What?”

“You didn't call me a magister,” Dorian said happily. “At last. Progress.”

Blackwall rolled his eyes with a huff. “And yet you're still an ass.” He levered himself up. “I'll go fetch you a book to keep you from losing your mind in here.”

“Please nothing too dry.”

“I was going to go see if I could get smut off of Varric, but I can go get you _101 Uses for Elfroot_ -”

“Oh come on!”

oOo

_Mother,_

_As I'm certain you're aware, my engagement is off. Please stop sending me letters insinuating it would be an excellent idea to marry a woman whose family has made it clear that I will be killed on sight._

_Dorian_

oOo

“This whole thing is really quite wretched,” Dorian said peevishly, clinging to Bull's arm as they made their way in a slow loop around the courtyard. The healers were growing tired of his moping indoors, and had declared that he could either start taking regular walks or start taking regular sleeping herbs to give them a bit of respite. Dorian picked walking. Bull, thankfully, was a patient man and not much given to snapping even when Dorian was being prickly. “I don't know why I just can't heal.”

He did know why, and Bull knew why too. The Healers had spelled it out for him, quiet and somber. Words like “ _internal damage from blood magic_ ” and “ _lingering affects of former attacks_ ” and “ _potential permanent damage if not healed naturally_ ” had been thrown around. Dorian had insisted on Bull being in the room for that conversation, and was beyond thankful for it. The term “breakdown” was probably too kind for how he'd acted after. On top of the damage his body still carried, Dorian's own prowess at Necromancy made it difficult for healing spells to stick to him in the best of times. He would simply have to take elfroot and regular pain medicine until he was done. He sighed, leaning into Bull, and they sat down on the bench outside the armory.

“Maybe I should move out of the infirmary,” Dorian said quietly. “They need the space, and I have a room.”

He desperately didn't want to go back to his room.

“Nah,” Bull said, to his surprise. “Not your room. Stay with me for a bit.”

“You don't have a roof, I'm fairly certain the healers won't release me into your care,” Dorian said dryly.

“I could get a roof. I was talking to the Boss about that, anyway. There's space for a second room on top of mine, I was kind of thinking of putting an office over it.”

Dorian pulled back, looking at him in surprise. “An office?”

Bull shrugged, and Dorian noticed that his cheeks had gone faintly purple. “Well, yeah. That or make it storage or something. It'd be...nice. Dunno if it could happen, they still have to fix the wall and everything, but even if I could just have a solid roof then I'd have a nice picnic area out in the sun.” He was rambling a little, and Dorian screwed up his courage before reaching over to take his hand. Bull looked down in surprise, then back at him.

“Bull,” Dorian said quietly, “I think that's an excellent idea.”

Bull's smile was tentative but warm, and he ducked his head a little. Dorian's heart was hammering, but he squeezed Bull's hand and leaned his head against his shoulder.

They were friends. Good friends. Dorian wasn't sure how that'd happened honestly, but they were close and he loved that. Bull made him feel safe, and he would return that favor with as many affirmations as necessary.

He didn't even notice when he fell asleep, and when he woke back up it was in the Heralds Rest. It was bizarrely quiet for once, and he on Bull's lap, neatly wrapped up in a comfortable blanket with his head tucked under Bull's chin and warm arms around him. He blinked blearily, and watched as Krem approached. For once the man was smiling, not smirking at him, and Dorian felt something small and hopeful in him blossom as Krem carefully gave him a cup of water and squeezed his shoulder.

He stayed curled into Bull as the qunari slept, his pulse even against Dorian's ear, and slowly drifted back off himself, to the sound of waves under skin.

oOo

Bull got a roof, and Dorian got a bed.

It was a small bed, neat and tidy, and fit into the corner to the right of Bull's. The room had been cleaned up and fixed, and a new desk about the size of Cullen's had been brought in. Dorian's things were placed in a secondary dresser with a vanity mirror, a massive old loveseat was unearthed and brought for him to sit in, and then that was that. Dorian was officially sharing a room with Bull.

The days were largely quiet. Dorian was allowed to wander by himself _carefully_ on the ramparts, making long loops back and forth to get his strength up. Cullen grew used to him traversing through his office, absently waving at him whenever he passed and sometimes flagging him down for a chess game. He could, if he promised to go very slowly, go to the library and make his way up the stairs to his nook to fetch some new works. Solas walked with him most of those times, telling him about the recent expeditions and pausing whenever Dorian had to hold his stomach and rest a while. They never talked about it, but Dorian was beyond grateful, and took the opportunity to ask about more specific things when Solas was in a good mood.

On one such day, after Sera had caught up with him carefully making his way back to Cullen's office to go across to their room, Dorian found himself almost angry.

“You know,” he said to Sera as they snacked on nuts from the Tavern, “I half wish they would have finished the job.”

Sera froze, and Dorian realized what that sounded like. He cringed.

“Not like that, sorry. It's just that it's taking so bloody long for me to heal, and I hate being so helpless.”

“Yeah, what's with that?” Sera asked, looking quietly relieved. “S'weird, you not being all healed.”

Dorian hesitated for a minute before saying, “I can't be healed. Not- not for gut wounds like this one anyway. It's better we found out now than in the field.”

“What, why can't they? S'healing, not like some crazy dead raising.”

Dorian's hands were starting to shake and he put the nutcracker down. “Sera, you- you remember how I went to Redcliffe? To see my father?”

“Yeah?” She frowned, scooting forward on his bed to sit closer to where he was being held up by pillows.

“My father was trying to get me to come home, but I couldn't do it. He-” Dorian broke off, twiddling the metal in his fingers for something to do. “He hurt me. Very badly. He tried to do something to me that would have made me not be me anymore, and so I ran away. But, well. It left some scars. In me. Physical scars, I mean, on my organs. And it would put too much strain on them to try and knit my body together to heal like that, so I have to heal like this.”

Sera had gone very still, and Dorian looked up uncertainly. “Sera?”

“What did he do?” she said, in a very careful, calm voice. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“It was blood magic,” Dorian said quietly, looking back down at his hands. “Please understand, I didn't want it-”

“ _Shit_ ,” Sera hissed, jumping off the bed and pacing. “All this whole time, you've just- and I laughed! About blood magic! And you laughing with all this and that's what happened even with the gold shitting. Or because of the gold shitting.”

“Mostly because of,” Dorian muttered, and she clutched at her hair.

“Can I kill him?”

“No.”

“Just a little bit?”

“You can't kill someone just a little bit, Sera, it doesn't work like that.” Dorian sighed. “Besides, I don't actually want him dead.”

“Wot?” Sera climbed back on the bed, looking at him like he'd just started wearing pants on his head.

Dorian smiled crookedly. “I don't want him dead. Really. The thing is, despite all of that, he's still my father and I love him. If he ever really apologized, if he ever understood why what he did hurt me so badly, I'd be back in his arms in an instant with everything forgotten. Isn't that terrible?”

“Kinda,” she said, taking his hand. “But that's not your fault.”

His smile went wobbly, and they sat together as he forced himself to breathe through it all.

oOo

Dorian kissed Bull for the first time two days later.

They had a routine, of the kind that two people sharing space fall into. The rhythm of morning came to Bull earlier than Dorian, but he always took the time to tell him where he was going before he left. Dorian would have been annoyed about being woken up, but he couldn't deny the relief he felt when he realized he knew where Bull was instead of fearing he'd been carted off and murdered. Dorian looked forward to that quiet little morning ritual.

Bull's hand gentled him awake, and Dorian blinked up at him as Bull smiled.

“I'm going down to train and get breakfast,” Bull said softly, knowing how tender Dorian's head could be in the morning even without drinking. “Want me to get you anything?”

“Mmm,” Dorian hummed, nuzzling into Bull's hand where it rested on his hair. “Persimmons.”

Bull chuckled, stroking his hair. “Don't think I can manage that one.”

“Damn. Then oatmeal will do.”

Bull smiled again, soft and fond, and Dorian reached out to gently tug him closer. Bull obliged, and froze as Dorian gently kissed his lips.

“Have a good day,” Dorian said sleepily, burrowing back into his pillows.

He realized what he'd done when Bull came back with a breakfast tray and had a spring in his step, and something in his chest grew light. They said nothing, but Dorian climbed up on his bed and they sat together, eating fresh pears and oatmeal rich with cinnamon. Bull's arm wrapped around him, Dorian nestled into his shoulder, and that, as they say, was that.

oOo

Dorian was declared fully healed nearly two months after the attack, and had a scar that ran over the ridges of fine muscle. Bull's hands held his ribs, tender, as he kissed it. Maraas-Lok sat on the table, half the bottle gone, and Dorian was lazy with the warmth of it.

“We have to leave tomorrow,” he murmured as Bull pressed kisses over his skin and nosed gently at the tenderness there.

“Mmm.”

“Shouldn't have been drinking.”

“Mmm.”

“Worth it, though.”

A chuckle against his skin, and the tenderest nip of teeth to make him arch.

“Dorian,” Bull breathed, like his name was a prayer, and Dorian let himself be worshiped.

oOo

“Oh, Maker,” Dorian muttered as the world spun. “That was ill-considered.”

Bull, holding onto his head as Meershaum cackled, groaned.


End file.
